Suspicious fire outside UC president's home

Oakland

Published 4:00 am, Friday, August 21, 2009

A car was set on fire early Thursday near the Oakland hills home of University of California President Mark Yudof, in what investigators believe could be arson.

Neighbors reported the blaze after hearing explosions at 1:50 a.m. on Woodmont Way in the Grizzly Peak Estates neighborhood of the Oakland hills, authorities said. The car was destroyed, said Alameda County sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson.

Yudof lives nearby, but investigators said the car did not belong to him. Authorities did not say who owned the car, a Volkswagen, or whether Yudof had been home at the time.

The sheriff's bomb squad determined that no explosives were used. But some kind of "incendiary accelerant" was used to set the car on fire, Nelson said.